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Yeah it is true its optional but some distros are *bad* at packaging these optional things. For example this happened to me once:
Removing Mono wants to remove
- Tomboy (understand this)
- Gnome Applets (because tomboy is one!?..)
- Gnome Panel (because applets sit on it..)
etc etc and break the gnome desktop as a result. I am not going to name the distro for needless flaming but merely pointing out that it is usually the packagers fault when removing mono breaks the gnome desktop as it works flawlessly on other distros as others have mentioned.
So first place to complain about such problem would be the bug tracker for your distro.
Removing Mono wants to remove
- Tomboy (understand this)
- Gnome Applets (because tomboy is one!?..)
- Gnome Panel (because applets sit on it..)
Gnome Applets is almost certainly a metapackage, depending on all the applets. Remove one and the metapackage is removed, but the rest remain. Gnome Panel probably is too (it would be pretty dumb to have it removed otherwise). Likewise, Gnome-Desktop is a metapackage. Its removal means nothing other than that you no longer have every single piece installed (which is what you want, since you wish to be rid of Tomboy).
I see this all the time in Debian with KDE. Someone complains about having multiple multimedia players or multiple text editors. When told to remove the ones they don't want, (s)he says (s)he can't because it "would remove KDE." Yes, the KDE metapackage that draws in all parts including many text editors. If you don't need all of it, you don't need the metapackage.
Similarly, if you don't need all of the Gnome Applets (say, you don't want Tomboy), you don't need the metapackage. That's assuming it is a metapackage, which I don't know for sure since I don't use Gnome and you didn't mention which distro you are using, though I am assuming Ubuntu.
How it it patent encumbered? Name some patents that it infringes.
It may indeed infringe some patents. Some say that most free software projects infringe patents. I guarantee you that you're running software that could be claimed to "infringe patents". Note Microsoft's claim about the kernel. This is because of a broken system that allows broadly-defined patents, and is not the fault of software.







Member since:
2007-09-25
This is too true. I'm tired of people saying that "Mono is required for Gnome" It isn't. It's optional.
Why is Mono such a bad thing anyhow? It's faster than Python, which nobody complains about being tied to Gnome.
It's released under an open-source license, so it's free software.
What exactly is the problem here?